Apple hides an ARM chip in the Lightning Digital AV adapter http://avik-fidocs.blogspot.com/2013/03/apple-hides-arm-chip-in-lightning.html
...the Apple Digital Lightning AV adapter was equipped with an ARM system chip resting inside the connector at the device end. The SoC is complete with 256MB of RAM, which some speculate could be a decoder for AirPlay. The secret secret was discovered by the developers at Panic Inc. who stumbled on the chip while troubleshooting the device in their upcoming project for video-out capabilities. [...] As far as Panic thinks, the chip could be a convertor or decoder with an operating system encoded within. This OS boots up immediately when connected, which explains the lengthy startup time for the video output through it. The reason for doing so could be due to the inability of raw HDMI output from the Lightning connector and the possibility of Apple's engineers trying to reduce the cost of the equipment with maximum functionality. Hence, someone had to think out of the box and put this tiny computer on an external accessory - and hence the Lightning Digital AV adapter. The use of a tiny computer chip inside the adapter also explains the whopping price tag of Rs 3,500 [~64 USD] for the connector alone. See site for internal photos. -Tom _______________________________________________ Hardwarehacking mailing list [email protected] http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/hardwarehacking
